St. Mary's wins at last second Mason's jumper at : 01 tops Owls for title, 42-40

Westminster Holiday

December 31, 1997|By John W. Stewart | John W. Stewart,SUN STAFF

The championship game of the annual Westminster Holiday tournament came down to a two-minute drill. Westminster coach Dave Byers got what he wanted out of it for the first 94 seconds, but Roger Reed of St. Mary's had the final seconds, and that turned out to be enough to squeeze out a 42-40 victory last night.

Westminster (6-2) did a solid job of protecting the ball and working the clock, and it came down to Aaron Krug driving the lane, then passing off to an open Nick Farver for a layup. Except that the ball went through Farver's hands and out of bounds.

Now it was the visitors' turn. They worked through two timeouts and a possession call on a jump ball to finally get the ball to A. J. Mason, a 6-foot senior guard. Mason got around a defender on the perimeter and watched as his 10-foot jump shot from the side went through with one second on the clock.

"We decided to go 'man' at that two-minute timeout," said second-year coach Reed, now 2-for-2 in Westminster tournament titles. "They ran off more time than we wanted, but we were trying to put them in a sense of urgency. And we had some fouls to give, too.

"On the possession after the jump-ball call, we wanted to go straight to the rack." Seven seconds showed at the time.

Of the last two minutes, Byers said, "We wanted to get them out of their zone and to spread the floor. We said when we get to the point where we had what we wanted -- the ball in Aaron's hands [Aaron Krug, a senior leader and one of the team's best shooters] -- to go for it."

St. Mary's (6-5) went 2-for-2 with the tournament's outstanding player award, as 6-foot-10 senior Matt Treadwell succeeded current senior D. J. Dauses. Treadwell, who had 10 points in Monday's opening-game win over Gwynn Lake, came back with 12 points and four blocks, three of them in the opening minutes when neither team could find the basket.

Gwynn Lake (3-5) turned a 10-point third-quarter lead into a 93-69 consolation victory over Glenelg. Tremain Rowle led the winners with 32 points, his season's average. Brandon Robertson had 15 points for Glenelg (2-6).